3-4 green onions, cut on a diagonal, 1/2-inch apart, including the greens

2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

2-3 hot chiles, preferably red serranos, seeded, sliced

1-inch nob of ginger, peeled, cut lengthwise into matchstick shapes

1/2 cup loosely packed, chopped cilantro

Method

1 Chill the steak in the freezer for 30 minutes before you slice it, this will make it easier to cut in thin slices. Slice the steak first crosswise in 1/2-inch thick slices. The cut each slice lengthwise into strips.

2 In a medium bowl, whisk together the marinade ingredients; the soy sauce, vinegar, grated ginger, honey, red chile flakes, and cumin. Mix the beef in with the marinade to coat and let it sit for at least 30 minutes, and up to 4 hours, in the fridge.

3 In a small bowl, mix the cornstarch with 2 tablespoons of cold water to make a slurry.

4 Heat the oil in a wok, or a large sauté pan, over high heat until it is nearly smoking. As the oil is heating up, pat the beef dry and separate it into small batches no larger than what can fit into the palm of your hand. Working in batches, sauté beef until just brown outside but rare inside, no more than 1 minute. Transfer beef to a bowl.

5 When all of the beef is cooked, put the chiles and garlic into the pan and stir-fry 30-45 seconds. Add the julienned ginger and cook for 30-45 seconds more. Add the beef back to the pan. Add the cornstarch slurry. Add the scallions and mix everything together. Cook for 1 minute.

Turn the heat off and mix in the cilantro. Serve at once with steamed white rice.

Click on the comments you'd like to print with your recipe. Grayed out comments will not print.

Comments

Lydia (The Perfect Pantry)

To me this is Chinese comfort food, and if you keep a pantry full of Asian condiments, you really don’t need to add much in the way of ingredients. I’m not a cilantro lover, so I’d probably leave that out. But I might add in some baby bok choy, if I were lucky enough to have it on hand.

I used to go to a certain website to get recipes and ideas for dinner. I’m a bachelor so sometimes I need fast/healthy interesting meals. I came across this site a week ago today and have made at least four different meals. I have beef in the fridge right now and I’m going to make this tonight. This is my new favorite site. Thanks for keeping it current. Oh, can I use flour instead of corn starch?

Hmm, good question on the flour vs corn starch. You could try it, though I think corn starch will work better for this purpose. ~Elise

I’ve been on a stir-fry kick lately, having just gotten a wok for the first time. I’ve made stir fries three times a week for the last three weeks! So yeah, I’m bookmarking this recipe for next week. It looks great! Ginger is possibly my favorite ingredient – each week I find myself buying bigger and bigger roots of it.

I made this last night and it is a winner. My serranos were still green. Couldn’t find “reds” without driving all over town. I used only 2 small green and sliced thinly without seeding (thinking the whole time, “this is gonna be hot!”) I was right. Way too hot if not seeded. I have a well developed palate for “hot” but even this was a bit too hot. Next time I’ll definitely seed.

I made this the other night and sliced the peppers as you told me. I didn’t know whether to seed them (I’ve been cooking for years and still didn’t just use common sense) so I kept the seeds. I used three green serrano peppers for this dish and 1.25# beef. I even added more vegetables. It was SO SO spicy! I have been eating it since it’s delicious but next time I’ll do 2 peppers and take all of the ribs/seeds out. Just for others looking for that advice. But thanks for the recipe, we’ll be making this again next week!

Made this tonight and was even better than expected! This one is going in the file for sure! I used 2 red serranos (w/o seeds) and it was the perfect amount of spice for us. I made it in my larger cast iron skillet and meat came out perfect. Thanks for the great recipe!

Made this last night. I think it may have been a touch too much ginger, so next time I’ll reduce. I also added peanuts and snow peas for extra crunch and extra greens. this was really good. Totally forgot to make rice though. Oops! Will def. make again. Thank Elise, another winner!

Tried this ginger beef stir fry the other night and it was fantastic! The meat was tender due to the searing in small batches, and very flavourful!! Shared the recipe with friends and will definitely make it again.

Very very delicious! I might not have used enough ginger though. It tasted more like cilantro than ginger so I will deffinitely add about twice as much ginger as I did and maybe some more veggies. Other than that it was awesome! Thank you!

This was delicious! I added some veggies out of my garden that needed to be used: carrot and zucchini. I also used seasoned rice vinegar since it was all I happened to have on hand. I think it threw off the flavor a bit so I’ll try the unseasoned next time. The marinade was great.

Thank you so much for the recipe! I marinaded the beef for 30 minutes, but next time I will let it marinate an hour or two to see if it’s even more flavorful. The only modifications I made were adding some sliced mushrooms and some blanched asparagus and carrot. I only added one green serrano based on previous reviews, but next time I’ll add two because it wasn’t spicy enough for us.

We had this for dinner tonight and it was great. Your instructions for how to properly stir-fry the meat are probably the clearest and most concise I’ve found. Thank you so much for another awesome recipe.

I was looking for a new recipe to use up some ginger root I had. It tasted GREAT! Just cooking for myself, I used a small NY steak (reduced the other ingredients proportionately) and substituted a fresh jalepeno (1/2 of it) from my garden. I also cooked some sliced carrots & at the end, added those & frozen snow peas.

OH MY! Very tasty and a really square meal over rice. Shrimp and/or chicken would be just as great with it!

This is delicious! My husband and I make this once a week. We have charcoaled grilled the meat instead of stir frying it and eat it with steamed rice. We have also used boneless skinless chicken breasts instead. also delicious.

The marinade makes about 1/2 cup, so if I were to add vegetables to this dish I would up the marinade amounts as well, so that you would have more sauce. But don’t marinate the vegetables, only the beef.

Excellent!
While I did make some changes to suit personal preference, I very much kept to the original spirit of this dish. I kept the marinade unchanged, but reduced the amount of meat while adding broccolini, baby bok choi, and julienned yellow pepper (obviously, I did not marinade the vegetables). I very briefly stirfried the veggies first, and then set them aside, throwing them in only at the very end. Instead of the serranos I used about 2 tsp.of Gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste), since I currently have some on hand. Even though I really love ginger, I thought that matchstick pieces might be a bit in the face, so I grated that part of the ginger as well, and I added one large, finely minced shallot. Finally, I used egg noodles instead of rice.
So.. several modifications, but I prepared the marinade exactly as written, while generally following the method and steps. It was all delicious!

This marinade is so yummy! I cut back the chili pepper flakes to 1/4 tsp because my kids don’t like spicy food. Also, I didn’t have any of the veggies on hand (and I used the last of my ginger in the marinade) so I actually put in a red pepper and some spinach instead. This is a great and versatile recipe. I served it with a lentil pilaf. Yum!

The marinade, ginger treatment, and the cornstarch slurry here form a solid foundation for a good stir-fry. I went with beef and a large handful of fresh basil and it turned out restaurant-quality. Nice work on this one!